Saturday, March 17, 2018

Saturday Spectacular: Embracing Excitement

I've mentioned it twice now - the upcoming move. In my last Friday Feels post, I alluded to some recent things that have happened in my life, and talked about the way those things have impacted the timing of my future plans for the girls and I. I talked a bit about how our upcoming move is interacting with my mental health, and then in this post I shared how I've been working to put a positive spin on starting over.

But really, how does one take the complete overhaul of their world and make it a good thing? In the last five years, my entire life has turned itself upside down more times than I care to count - in ways both good and bad. There has been a lot of growth, a lot of adjustment, and a lot of adapting, and while many of those things were good, most of the time they were also incredibly difficult to experience and painful to go through.

Still, I'm trying to find the joy in all of it, even the challenging bits, and this has a two-fold impact: I have survived so much stress and struggle in the past, and I've attempted continuously to rise to the various challenges in my life. For the most part, I've been proud of the way I handled things. I've done my best to be someone I can be proud of, even when things were tough; I've sought and embraced the good in even the strangest or most difficult circumstances. And because of my varying success in that effort ... seeing those circumstances change means both the addition of unknown but much-anticipated goodness and the shedding of many of the stressors I've been most deeply struggling with.

But underneath the anxiety, underneath fear of the unknown, crippling uncertainty, and the sad knowledge that I will deeply miss certain positive aspects of the current status quo, there is a fine line of uninhibited thrill running through my blood.

Every new year excites me because it means a fresh chance to make things happen. Like starting over in some ways - and I know this isn't individual to only me, otherwise new year's resolutions wouldn't be such a big deal.

And just as the newness of a fresh year begins to wear off, in rolls spring - with refreshing rains, the budding of trees and flowers, and the coming to life of new generations throughout so much of the animal kingdom. Spring in itself is a fresh start, an awakening, a return to life after what may have been a long and dreary winter.

Life is much the same in this respect, where the deepest, coldest times of "winter" are always followed by "spring" - a chance to awaken and begin again. To choose a new trajectory - to create new momentum.

This is what this move represents to me in so many ways, and so I've been allowing myself time to celebrate quietly, to sit back and dream and plan. To think about more than just the bills, the hassles, the packing, the things we don't have.

I've been reframing - thinking in terms of clearing out and minimizing. Taking only what's necessary and the things that hold value in the heart. Photos, toys. My salt-and-pepper-shaker collection that I've kept for so many years. The sudden absence of so much other stuff that was accumulated over the years is exciting to me - it opens doors to new looks, new chances to play, new opportunities to rebuild. (I won't even mention how insane the parallels are right now between my current life and the novel I've been working on for the last few years.)

I've been thinking about this move in conjunction with the joy and renewal of spring - with spring comes a new birth of color and beauty. I found this color palette on Pinterest a few days ago, and fell in love with how fresh and feminine the colors are.

I had been thinking I wanted a color scheme that would unify our living space while also allowing for our individuality. I'm planning to use greys and whites throughout the space, pulling each room together with the lightness and solidity of those colors while interspersing brighter pops of color to break up the plainness of grey. The idea is to use grey, white, and shades of one color in my room, grey, white, and shades of another color in Josephine's room, and then grey, white, and shades of a third color in Eden's room. From there, those colors will bleed into the rest of the space, showing up in the living room, the kitchen, the bathroom - unifying our space by pulling our individual personalities together. So I adjusted the original palette idea just a little:

I've been window-shopping like a madwoman lately, brainstorming ideas, making tentative plans. Debating ways to make this work for me, not only in my life as a single mom but also in my mental health journey - as well as in my writing.

Starting over with virtually nothing has its benefits; I won't have loads of things covered in memories I no longer want. I won't have loads of things I didn't choose, things which don't fit who I am or my own style. Starting over means starting fresh, with the ability to reflect and repesent my own style in my own space, unhindered by the sometimes alternate needs and preferences of anyone else.

I hope you'll hang out with me and follow along as the plans I've been dreaming up begin to fall into place. I can't wait to share it all with you.

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